Youth Leading Advocacy for Africa Agenda 2063

The National Youth Council of the Liberia YMCA has held its March edition of the Monthly Civic Competence Speaker Series.

The series is organized as an engagement platform to unlock potential and empower young people to participate, engage and become responsible global citizens. The program is under the Africa Alliance of YMCAs flagship youth leadership development program, “From Subject to Citizen -S2C.”

Launched under the theme: “Young People Leading Advocacy to Promote the Africa Agenda 2063”, the competence series is also intended for young people to be empowered with requisite skills, space and voice to influence change as citizens.

The program held at the YMCA headquarters in Monrovia brought together sixty persons, including stakeholders, government officials, and civil society organizations, the Federation of Liberian Youth, the Liberia National Student Union, youth organizations, universities, high schools and the National Secretariat and Board of the YMCA.

Keynote speaker Attorney Prince M. Korvah, Assistant Minister of Labor for Regional Affairs, observed that African youth have searched for ways to prepare for the future, while exhausting all energies on making a living.

Minister Korvah said the generation of young people from the signing of the original African Union Charter took on the Pan African Project and pushed the agenda. “The current group of leaders pushed it a notch by crafting a policy paper – the Agenda 2063 – to guide successors in the realization of the dream of a united Africa,” Minister Korvah informed the gathering of mainly youth participants.

He admonished that Africans owed it to themselves, their gallant predecessors and posterity to push systems to the limit to ensure that the goal of an integrated, prosperous and economically viable continent is actualized by 2063. “This is a silent inter-generational pact we signed up to and inherited in partnership with the broader vision of 2063 by building on the current progress,” he said.

The National General Secretary of the Liberia YMCA, E. Edward Gboe, explained the S2C concept, which is for young people to be mature and move from the manipulation of bandit politics to skills and their capacity.

“The lack of civic competence has led many people to make the wrong choices,” Mr. Gboe said. “If the economic renaissance of young people is achieved, then political manipulation of young people will be reduced.”

Earlier, one of the ‘Change Agents’, S2C Ambassador Decontee George, said the series is intended to strengthen the National Youth Council of the Liberia YMCA to equip young people on civic engagement issues.

Another S2C Ambassador, Beyan Harris, said Agenda 2063 is a development plan established by the African Union to build a prosperous and united Africa.

Africa YMCA’s vision is to help leaders incorporate the agenda into their development plans for the improvement of young people on the continent, said Mr. Harris.

A former Youth Council President, Alston Armah, said the S2C concept allows young people to be transformed from subjects to citizens with a voice, and called on young people to engage constructively to bring about the change that is needed for young people to become citizens.

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